Sexy, Innocent Child-Woman

An upsetting article

I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the 4th of July weekend when I read this article on the Inquirer website. It hit home--especially since I know some inmates, both in CIW and Bilibid, who were incarcerated when they were minors. One of them is my namesake, and she's still in prison. She is now 20 or 21 years old, I believe, and she has a three-year-old son. She used to be on death row. Last year, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. During my last visit to the Philippines (December of 2004), several inmates in CIW told me that the cases of the death row inmates--except for those who had been "affirmed" of their death sentences, that is--were under review, including Dianne's case. With all the political turmoil in the Philippines right now, it is not surprising that the issues of juvenile offenders have been placed on the back burner (for the nth time).

How ironic that a predominantly Christian country such as ours would allow its children to languish in prisons and jails and to be corrupted by the system. The hypocrisy of our sorry excuse for a government is so obscene (Oops, baka ma-censor ako nito). To be passive in the face of the crisis in the criminal justice system is tantamount to consenting to the status quo.

I am posting the article for your perusal. As fellow blogger Bambit said, the outrage must be felt by all who read it.


21 children in jail await execution
By Veronica Uy
INQ7.net

First posted 09:32pm (Mla time) July 02, 2005

Taken from http://news.inq7.net/top/index.php?index=1&story_id=42145

TWENTY-ONE of the 2,000 or so children in jail throughout the country are on death row, an official of the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) has said.Eighty percent of the 2,000 are first-time offenders, and 11 percent are girls.In an interview with INQ7.net, CWC executive director Lina Laigo said the 21 condemned children were either convicted of homicide or murder."But nobody bothered to look into the circumstances of their crimes," said Laigo, a former secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).In some instances, juvenile suspects were tried as adults for lack of record on their age, she said. "But there are other ways of determining a person's age aside from birth certificates."

The CWC, DSWD and the United Nations Children's Fund have been lobbying Congress to enact the proposed Comprehensive Juvenile Justice Law. It seeks to provide special protection to children in conflict with the law.

Laigo said the bill has four key provisions: raise the child's age from nine to 12 years old to be criminally liable, establish separate detention centers for children, provide a diversion program to keep them out of jail, and to institute "restorative justice" in the law.

Restorative justice, Laigo explained, essentially seeks to repair the damage done to victims. This way, public safety is enhanced as the offender, victim, and the community come together to prevent juvenile delinquency.

The campaign for the protection of child offenders has been going on for 10 years, and the bill to comprehensively address juvenile felony has been waiting Congressional action since 1998. However, it has been sidelined by other issues, Laigo lamented.

"We started five congresses ago," she said. "Maybe we don't realize that children, especially children in conflict with the law, must be given priority."Child advocates maintain that "jail is no place for a child" and a death sentence is too heavy a verdict for erring children.

found herself @ 5:54 PM